Animal ill -treatment trials –
When Lausanne’s model farm finds itself before the courts
Negligence, overcrowding linked to dioxin and animals left to their fate, the municipal herd has gone through a dirty period. The operating chief and an employee are tried.
Red Roux lambs of Valais had been decimated between 2021 and 2022 in Sauvabelin by a peak of infestation in verses, after a treatment and a painful agony. The former chief farmer of the city of Lausanne must answer it.
CHRIS BLASER / VQH
- The agricultural exploitation of Sauvabelin experienced a major crisis with an excess mortality of lambs between 2021 and 2022.
- Dioxin soil contamination caused the ban on marketing meat and therefore overcrowding.
- The sick sheep did not receive preventive treatments against parasites, or treatments against the disease.
- The operating chief, suspended since then, risks 8 months in suspended prison sentence for negligence.
Before the Lausanne police court on Monday, the victims are not human beings, but farm animals. These red sheep from Valais or woolly pigs that delight the public on The agricultural exploitation of Sauvabelin. An area belonging to the municipality and which is intended, as such, exemplary.
Between summers 2021 and 2022, these herds of rare races crossed a very dirty pass: for lack of being treated preventively as it was usually done, the sheep was decimated by a nasty worm. During this period, some 37 to 50 carcasses of lambs were sent to the carnated waste center, an unusual excess mortality.
A drama preceded by significant negligence attributed to the chief of exploitation of the city’s agricultural domains, the main defendant. The public prosecutor reports in his indictment only once the disease declared, animals were left without care. Once in agony, employees were asked to place them in a livestock that served as a sanitary boxes. From “dying”, will drop an employee during the investigation.
The prosecution also continues the one who reported these shortcomings in July 2022. A young farmer, an employee of the field, dismissed just after. His wrong? Having proceeded to the killing by suffocation of two lambs himself.
Consulted, his superior had refused to make them euthanize them by a veterinarian, as is the rule. “These animals agonized, did not hold on their legs, their heads fell, they were comatose. It was horrible. I was cornered in an impossible situation and I made the decision that seemed to me the most human. I apologized to them before doing it, not so much for my gesture as for the fact that they got there … “
Dioxin’s fault?
Did the head of the field, congratulated in 2020 for twenty years of exemplary service, brutally lost foot? If he admits having been overwhelmed, it is because in this fatal spring, in addition to a painful covid, a fall in two-wheelers and a long sick leave, he had to manage an unprecedented crisis: that of dioxin.
At the beginning of 2021, the city discovered with amazement the contamination of its floors. Emergency measures are taken and they also concern the municipal herd which evolves in the most affected areas, the wheat and wilderness. The authorities decide to renounce the marketing of meat and, at the same time, not to euthanize these animals, leaving them simply in guard. Result: overcrowding.
Overwhelmed, farmers therefore hold male pigs, normally intended for slaughter, in their mother’s enclosure, causing the trampling of young. In uncertainty, the boss of the farm also explains that he has rejected the dewormer administration to his sheep: “I was waiting to know if the meat could be consumed. If I had treated, it would have been necessary to wait 80 days before slaughter, because we work in organic … “
In Sauvabelin, pigs had been left with females, failing to be able to drive the males to the slaughterhouse. Their contaminated dioxin meat had been deemed unfit for marketing.
Chantal Dervey/24 Hours
What does not explain the absence of care or the fact of leaving the animals in agony, is annoyed by President Jean-Philippe Croset. The sixties, suspended since, advances several explanations. Sick leave, priority on other tasks or short reaction time in the face of a sick animal: “These Reds of Valais, once affected, die in two or three hours. Time to bring the veterinarian, it would have been too late. But I admit I made mistakes. ”
Deliberate strategy
City lawyer, Me Yan Schumacher delivers another analysis: “He renounced dewormingly deworming, he knew that the sheep was likely to fall sick and die. And that was his goal, to fight overcrowding. ”
Absent from the debates, the public prosecutor retains the ill-treatment inflicted on animals and requires a suspended 60-day sentence for the employee, and 8 months of deprivation of liberty suspended for the chief of operation. Fines are also suggested to the judge, who will make his decision on Tuesday. Defense lawyers argue the acquittal.
Note that following this case, a reorganization took place to reduce the overcrowding of the Lausanne livestock and offer it the conditions of worthy detention.
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